


Strange To See You Again

by GreenVeal



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Cat religion, Exes feeling bad, Moonpool, Nightmares, Other, StarClan, ThunderClan, WindClan, less than stellar parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 22:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17537906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenVeal/pseuds/GreenVeal
Summary: Leafpool finds herself at the edge of the Moonpool, thinking about recurring nightmares. Crowfeather is there too. They talk about Hollyleaf.





	Strange To See You Again

**Author's Note:**

> Is this a sequel to “Birds of a Feather”??  
> TBF I have no idea.
> 
> If I make one about Lionblaze then it’s officially a series.

Leafpool sat in silence, counting the stars as she laid her head upon her paws. She was waiting for sleep to come, waiting for some cosmic sign to tell her what had driven her to the Moonpool this night. 

The only answer she received was a cold wind from the moors, carrying the scent of Windclan along with a chill. The Moonpool rippled with the breeze, bringing a icy wave up over her nose and into her nostrils. Leafpool sneezed. 

Surely that had been a sign from Starclan, she’d just been politely told to go home. With a huff, she stood and turned an about-face. Her breath caught in her lungs as she realized she wasn’t alone.

Crowfeather. He stood about six foxlengths away from her, his dark, angular face peering out at her from the brambles. Most likely, she would have missed him entirely if not for his eyes, pale blue and reflective as the stripes of a thunderpath, they caught the light of the Moonpool, practically glowing in the dark.

Bile rose in Leafpool’s throat the moment she saw him. 

“I should probably leave.” He said, his voice as sharp as it had ever been.

Leafpool couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Had he been following her, stalking her like prey? She should have known paces ago, Starclan damn him, she’d smelled him and dismissed it. 

“No. You shouldn’t be here in the first place. Why- why did you come here?” She tried carefully to hide the upset in her voice, she didn’t know his intent, and she simply couldn’t bring herself to find malice in his expression. 

Crowfeather stared at her before averting his gaze and slinking out into the moonlight. “I’ve been dreaming, unusual, Starclan-type dreams. And then I saw you here, and then I began to second guess coming here in the first place.”

Leafpool’s heart sank as she heard his confession, she had come under similar circumstances. Dreams about Hollyleaf, dreams that kept her up at night, dreams that stuck with her all day.

She had to brace herself before speaking again. “You’ve been dreaming about Hollyleaf, haven’t you?”

A silence passed between them as Crowfeather nodded, his tail laid perfectly flat against the moist sediment along the pool’s edge. He wasn’t looking at Leafpool anymore, he didn’t seem to be looking at much of anything.

“In the dream she’s in a cave, just beneath my paws. I think I’ve had this dream a half a moon now, every night. She’s running in the tunnels beneath Windclan, running from something, I can hear her, but I can’t see her, and no matter what I do, I can’t reach her before she’s gone. When it catches her, I can hear it, in vivid detail.” His voice was absolutely distraught, and it caught Leafpool off guard, she hadn’t expected him to care so much about the daughter he never knew. “If it’s not a dream from Starclan, I think I might be loosing my mind.”

“I dream about her and Ashfur, she’s killing him, clawing him and drowning him. When she finally stops, his body starts to contort. It’s all loose bones under his pelt shifting around in the water. And she just leaves it there, writhing. I watch it move around until I wake up, the fish start picking at it, sometimes it makes noises. I never do anything, the fact that I can’t is part of the nightmare.”

Crowfeather’s ears were flat against his head, he had a thousand yard stare as he took in this information. “Is she?-“

“They aren’t dreams from Starclan, those don’t repeat themselves.” She wasn’t trying to comfort him, merely stating a fact.

“Then why did you come to Moonpool?”

“I’m a medicine cat, it’s what I do.”

“Oh.” His great, round eyes narrowed, now matching the rest of his slender face. “Then why are we having these dreams? Is she even involved-”

“I don’t know.”

Trepidatiously, Crowfeather moved his tail closer to her, she rolled her body slightly away from him, but she didn’t pull her tail away. He laid himself down where he sat, facing away from her. His glossy grey pelt blended into the silt beneath them. A wave lapped at his oversized ear, causing it to twitch. As he couldn’t see her face from his position, Leafpool smiled.

She didn’t love him, not anymore, not the way she used to. Whenever she looked at his face she could feel it, the absence of love. But even with that constant reminder, she couldn’t bring herself to hate the foreign tom. They couldn’t be together, they should have never been together, however, she didn’t regret having been with him.

Even if she didn’t love him, she did love Jayfeather, Lionblaze- and Hollyleaf.

“You know, I always hated being underground, even as a -paw back in the old territory I hated the idea of becoming a digger.” Crowfeather confided. “I hate- I hate thinking about it, Hollyleaf dying down there, her living down there.” His voice was tired, unusually dull. 

Leafpool wondered if he’d only shared that due to drowsyness. Her memories of his companionship in the mountains made her reconsider. For Crowfeather, that was intimate, a show of trust and honesty. With that in mind, Leafpool forced herself to respond.

“I don’t understand why she killed Ashfur, I never will. She killed him to keep a secret, and then she shared that same secret on the biggest stage the clans have to offer. It wasn’t revenge, it wasn’t pointed- it just was.”

“I wish, I wish I had the chance to understand her.”

“So do I, Crowfeather.”

Leafpool’s eyes fell shut, within a breath, she was asleep. It was a dreamless slumber, the best she’d had in years. 

She woke up to cold water engulfing her paw, it practically slapped her awake, she bolted upright and nearly awoke Crowfeather in the process. The tom’s presence surprised her, bringing her to think about her conversation the night before. It highlighted her restful sleep, she hadn’t dreamt about Hollyleaf this night. She considered waking Crowfeather to find out if his sleep had been the same, but she thought better of it. Anyway, she already had her answer from the peaceful expression on his face, his eyes were barely open, held slightly ajar by his nictating membranes, while his mouth hung open in a small triangular shape.

As she turned towards Thunderclan, she felt a pang in her chest, she found that she missed him, she missed being in love with him. She couldn’t make that come back, she couldn’t force herself to love him. They were a mistake, even if she didn’t particularly regret it.

With a deep breath, she parted the morning fog. The path ahead of her was beginning to clear, just like her mind. 

As she passed over log and hill she heard a familiar voice- Hollyleaf’s -ringing out from no particular direction. It was quiet, simultaneously pleading and hopeful.

“Thank you,”

Monsterlengths away, Crowfeather heard the same two words.


End file.
